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BINGHAMTON — Police reports connected to an investigation into the Binghamton Police Department’s former top detective raise questions about $3,700 in department cash that was reportedly stolen and later recovered.

Former detective Captain John P. Shea pleaded guilty in November to official misconduct, a misdemeanor, for stealing $1,900 in police department money shortly before he retired last year. He was sentenced to a one-year conditional discharge.

But the primary police report, obtained by this newspaper along with 10 pages of partially redacted police documents, indicates an additional $3,700 was, at one point, missing.

Neither Binghamton Police Chief Joseph Zikuski nor Broome County District Attorney Gerald Mollen would discuss how the $3,700 went missing, how it was returned, or who may have been involved.

“By a matter of law,” Zikuski wrote in reply to written questions for this report, “I am unable to respond to (questions).”

A formal letter from the city explaining the legal justification for redactions in the documents the newspaper received indicates Shea was not the only officer whose conduct may have been called into question.

The partially redacted documents, obtained through the state Freedom of Information Law, included narrative supplements from five officers investigating the case.

An examination of the documents indicates:

• The criminal complaint filed against Shea states that he stole $1,900 from a locked file cabinet in the department offices around the time he retired last year. But a police report indicates $5,600 was identified missing at one point. The report lists Shea as the suspect in connection with both the $1,900 that was missing, and $3,700 in cash that had been recovered.

• A police report lists Shea as a suspect for third- and fourth-degree grand larceny — both felonies — due to the amounts that were apparently missing. As part of a negotiated plea agreement, he was eventually charged with official misconduct, a misdemeanor.

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The investigation

In the spring of 2012, Shea’s career in the Binghamton Police Department came to a sudden halt.

At about 4:30 p.m. on March 18, Shea crashed a city vehicle in front of 1174 Vestal Ave. in the City of Binghamton. He was charged with misdemeanor DWI and possession of an open alcoholic beverage in a vehicle, a traffic infraction.

Shea, 55, who had been the captain of the Binghamton Police Department’s Detective Division since 2010, was suspended without pay.

One document said control of the Special Law Enforcement Fund — a supply of cash held in a locked filing cabinet in Shea’s office — was turned over to Sgt. Tom Eggleston. While the document said Shea turned over control of the fund to Eggleston, it does not indicate whether he surrendered the key and no longer had access. Prior to the DWI arrest, three BPD detectives had access to the drawer: Eggleston, Shea and Sgt. Dennis Redner.

An audit of the fund on March 23 determined $15,110.65 was present, which was only a few cents off from the amount reflected in the fund ledger, according to a supplementary police report later drafted by Capt. John Chapman, head of internal affairs for the BPD.

Shea retired and was replaced in May by Capt. Jack Collins.

A second audit was conducted on June 5. The fund ledger reflected a balance of $14,910.65, due to the withdrawal of $200 since the previous audit — but Chapman and Collins did not find the full amount present.

“The cash present was $13,010.65,” Chapman’s supplementary report states. “The status of the fund was therefore not good. The cash was short by $1,900.”

Chapman’s supplementary report discusses the two audits in detail, but a large portion of the middle of the document is redacted. The only reference to the separate $3,700 amount in the visible portions of the police reports reviewed by this newspaper is in the primary police report. That document does not explain how officers found the amount to be missing or how it was recovered.

According to Chapman's report, Assistant Chief William Yeager, Police Chief Joseph Zikuski and Redner were immediately notified after the June 5 audit identified $1,900 as missing.

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“At that time, I became suspicious that retired Capt. Shea might have taken the funds,” Redner wrote in his supplementary report. The next few sentences of his report — information that could possibly explain his suspicions — are redacted.

Redner’s report adds he became suspicious Shea had taken $1,900 while cleaning out his office. He called Shea on his cellphone at 11:08 a.m. and left a message about the audit, hoping Shea would call back and “take responsibility (for) the missing funds.”

“A few hours later, Shea called back and I told him of the discrepancy,” Redner wrote. “Shea acted surprised and stated he didn’t know any reason why the safe would be short of funds.”

Zikuski, in the statement issued to this newspaper, said the BPD’s preliminary investigation the day the theft was discovered determined Shea was responsible. The investigation was turned over to the Broome County District Attorney’s Office that same day.

“Under these particular circumstances, I felt the appropriate course of action was to inform District Attorney (Gerald) Mollen of our findings and to turn the investigation over to him that day,” Zikuski said. “That was the extent of the Binghamton Police Department’s involvement in the investigation.”

Later on June 5, 11 of the top officials in the BPD and the Broome County District Attorney’s Office held a meeting. The prosecutors and police discussed Shea’s access to his office between his DWI arrest and retirement.

“On at least two occasions that I am aware of, Shea had access to his office where he was there cleaning his belongings out,” Eggleston wrote. “During those two occasions, Shea at times was alone within his office with other employees coming and going to greet him.”

Police reports don’t reveal when Shea was cleaning out his office, but the complaint filed months later said he took $1,900 on or about April 25.

When Redner, Eggleston and BPD Investigator William Martino went to Shea’s house to speak with him in June, taking a digital recorder, Shea came out of his house and asked, “Are you here to arrest me?”

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The officers told Shea that Mollen was discussing a possible indictment in regard to the missing funds as well as official misconduct, Eggleston’s report states.

“At one point (Shea) stated that he did not take the money out of spite or vengeance, although it looks that way,” Eggleston wrote in his report.

Eggleston’s supplementary report and those of three other officers are partially redacted, shielding information related to parts of the investigation from public view.

One of the five supplementary police reports — Martino’s — was all but completely redacted before it was released to this newspaper. A report title, the dates “6/5/2012” and “6/6/2012” and Martino’s name are the only visible information on the report.

'Equal treatment'

Nearly four months passed before a criminal complaint was filed against Shea in Binghamton City Court on Sept. 26. The complaint accused him of official misconduct, a class A misdemeanor, in connection with the theft of $1,900.

Mollen said his office examined the circumstances surrounding the handling of all cash funds in the Binghamton Police Department’s Detective Division during the course of its investigation, including the $3,700 referenced in the original police report.

“This money was present in the Detective Division when we commenced our investigation,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Our review did not reveal any criminal misconduct by police officers other than Captain Shea.”

Mollen, in a written statement to this newspaper, explained that Shea “was charged, entered a guilty plea and was sentenced, pursuant to a negotiated plea agreement.”

Shea’s two felony larceny charges and one official misconduct charge, he said, were based on the same set of criteria that are considered in any criminal case in Broome County.

In his statement, Mollen identified 18 factors outlined by National District Attorneys Association guidelines — from “any possible mitigating circumstances” to “possible deterrent value of prosecution” — that are considered in a plea negotiation.

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“I cannot specify which factor weighed to what degree my evaluation,” Mollen wrote of the Shea case. “I am confident that the disposition properly balances these many factors, as well as the important principles of equal treatment and individual evaluation of each criminal case in Broome County, as best as could be accomplished.”

Shea pleaded guilty to the official misconduct charge at a Nov. 14 appearance in Binghamton City Court. In addition to a one-year conditional discharge, he was ordered to pay $1,900 in restitution, as well as a $1,000 fine.

'Open to compromise'

Criminal justice experts who reviewed the details of the misconduct investigation for this report expressed no qualms with the BPD’s handling of the situation as reflected in the police reports.

Bob Verry, the former police chief in South Bound Brook, N.J., and author of “Mechanics of a Police Internal Affairs Investigation,” said it’s not uncommon in a police misconduct investigation for officers from the target officer’s department to be intimately involved.

“For one reason, nobody knows the culture, subculture and policies of the Binghamton Police Department better than the officers who are employed there, and their assistance can prove to be quite valuable,” Verry wrote in an e-mail.

Cooperation between the department’s investigators and the local district’s attorney's office is also the norm in such investigations, he said.

Investigations into fellow officers in a department the size of the BPD are always difficult, said Maria Haberfeld, chairwoman of the Department of Law, Political Science and Criminal Justice Administration at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. But it is not an uncommon practice, she said.

“You’re going to end up dealing with officers who you might have policed with, patrolled with, been in a car with,” she said. “It’s open to compromise.”

Although Haberfeld took no issue with the way the investigation was handled, she raised questions about the fact that an officer who was found to have stolen money was only charged with official misconduct, and not with larceny.

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“They should be charged with both,” Haberfeld said. “... Even if it was a one-time event, there is nothing more eroding of public trust than finding out that a police officer is a plain criminal. So it’s very important for an organization to make a very strong statement.”

Mollen, in his statement, said any opinion shared by an expert without the information he had access to during plea negotiations “would be remarkably arrogant and uninformed.”

Verry, on the other hand, said each misconduct case should be decided individually on factors including witness credibility, investigatory defects and a “prosecutor’s belief crime fits the time.”

“The threat of official misconduct is always possible if a benefit is derived,” he said. “The filing of larceny, or any underlining offense, alone or in conjunction with official misconduct, is dependent on various different factors.”

'Out of bounds'

Due to New York’s strict laws governing the disciplinary records of public employees, questions surrounding the $3,700 identified in the primary police report and conduct by other active officers may never be answered.

In December, this newspaper filed a formal appeal under the state’s Freedom of Information Law arguing that the redacted material should be made public because Shea is retired and no longer subject to certain privacy privileges granted to active police officers.

As part of the appeals process, Binghamton Mayor Matthew T. Ryan was required to explain in writing why portions of the reports were concealed.

“The information which was redacted relates to conduct by other active officers,” Ryan wrote on Jan. 4. State legal precedent has been established preventing the disclosure of records “when allegations or charges of misconduct have not yet been determined or did not result in disciplinary action,” Ryan’s letter adds.

Robert Freeman, executive director of the New York State Committee on Open Government, agreed with Ryan that portions of a police report could be considered a disciplinary record if it discusses possible wrongdoing by the investigating officer, and on that basis can be redacted.

And if an allegation of misconduct against a public employee doesn’t lead to disciplinary action, he said, New York’s laws mandate that records dealing with an allegation should not become public.

“For better or for worse,” said Freeman, the state’s chief open government official, “it seems to me it’s out of bounds forever.”